Agree it’s extremely unlikely, but I think you’re all underestimating how weird politics is, especially this early in the cycle. We’ve had several presidents who were more unknown than RFK Jr at this point in the race.

@MatthewRitter Disagree with your conclusion. First of all, only like a 10% chance of non-Biden. And if it’s not Biden, lots of potential alternatives could jump in. RFK Jr. has never held political office (unprecedented except Trump) and is an anti-vaxxer, which would make him a very hard sell in the current Democratic electorate.

@MatthewRitter For example I think Harris, Buttigieg, Newsom, etc are all likelier replacements if something happens to Biden. And they have to add up to <13% along with RFK Jr.

True, he’s running, but I think it’s extremely unlikely he’ll beat Biden, and if Biden drops out I expect more serious candidates to enter.

@Conflux Actually, I didn’t see how well he was polling. Maybe this deserves a low single digit percentage then

@Conflux He isn’t polling well actually. His dead father and uncles are, he is drafting.

@BTE I’m not inclined to like him either, but if our goal here is to collectively iterate towards an understanding of reality, it seems most productive to keep our comments focused on falsifiable statements and theories.

@MatthewRitter A falsifiable-theory interpretation of his comment, which I think might be true, is something like: RFK Jr’s supposed supporters don’t know his platform and that he’s anti-vaccine, they just don’t like Biden and have a positive association with the name Kennedy. (And therefore they’re likely to not be real supporters, since if he’s ever polling too well they’ll be a media scrutiny cycle and they’ll learn about the real RFK Jr.)

Might make a market on this theory, though I’m not 100% sure how to formalize (maybe just my opinion??)

@Conflux I have always been interested in markets requiring an active experiment to resolve, such as finding 10 people on the street to focus I group on the issue. Obviously depends on you being willing to make the effort :-) I would subsidize such a market!

@MatthewRitter I don’t think I have any friends who are RFK Jr supporters. But maybe it should just be about, eg, whether his support decreases after more media coverage

This recent "The Hill" media segment at 6:30ish goes into it a bit about the surprising polling numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P24_bQWX6q0

I think if he has joe rogan , jack from twitter and Elon backing him, it at least warrants a 3% chance haha

@Blomfilter this man doesn't have 3% probability of getting the nomination, much less winning. Also he would lose against a MAGA republican, because people would choose the original, not the pos replica

@MatthewRitter I made this...it's an attempt

@Conflux Awesome! Making good market is hard, you can see my tiny number of attempts and how far short they fall :-) I really appreciate the diligence you’re putting in here